


Fireworks

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (2012), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mostly Fluff, Superfamily, oh and angst, there's definitely angst, there's some plot i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superfamily 'verse AU in which Clint and Bruce adopt a troubled young Jubilee. Plot immediately followed by pointless fluff and domesticity. You're welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which there is an attempt at exposition

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing that's been chewing on my brain for a couple weeks. Theoretically there is one more actual plot-filled chapter, but I can be persuaded to write more. (By persuaded I mean I will probably continue adding little domestic one-shots indefinitely, whether you ask me to or not. But you should ask me anyway because I am a lonely, lonely person.)

Her parents die when she is eleven years old.

There is a car crash, a horrible, terrible one where the car flips and the gas leaks from the gas tank and it all ignites and her parents are dead dead dead. She lives, briefly, in an orphanage, state run, but she hates the feeling of comforting hands on her shoulders and kind voices tickling her ears, so she slips away while she and one of the supervisors are at the supermarket and goes to the mall.

She doesn't leave for five months.

She had taken classes at Beverly Hills Prep before her parents died, and damn she was good at gymnastics. She preferred the vault and the uneven bars over floor exercises and balance beam routines, but she was good enough at all of it that they (her coaches, her parents) talked of her going to the Olympics, winning medals, making her country proud.

That's not really an option anymore, but she's certainly agile enough that she can evade mall security.

She learns how to steal. She nabs a pair of rollerblades from a sporting goods store and makes friend with the boys and occasional girl who skate in the skate park just outside the mall entrance. Sometimes they sneak into the mall and ride the rails from the second floor to the first, or create havoc around the fountains by daring each other to jump over jets of water ("If you get wet, you have to eat the a piece of gum from underneath the handrails!"). Jubilee uses the distraction to slip into peoples' pockets or purses and inch their wallets out. Sometimes she gets caught, but her friends help distract security while she zooms away.

She's been in the mall for three months when she sees someone from her old school. She isn't in Beverly Hills anymore, but a small town several miles away, so it's a shock to see Amelia. They're in the food court, and Jubilee has just swiped a wallet from the table of a harried-looking man with his ear pressed tightly to a cell-phone. Amelia stares at her, open-mouthed, and Jubilee flushes and throws the wallet back down, backing away quickly and then sprinting off. She makes it to the women's room and locks herself in a stall. Her hands shake.

Four and a half months in she is cornered without her friends to protect her. She is crouched behind a trash can in her rollerblades, helpless as the cops close in.

"Look, kid, you've been causing trouble around here for too long. You're surrounded and you've got a one-way ticket to juvie whether you cooperate or not. Come out nicely and ,maybe they'll go easy on you." The footsteps of the cop get louder as he approaches her hiding place. She can feel the panic rising in her chest. She can't go to juvie she can't she CAN'T oh god and she can't even do anything what is she going to DO-

Her hands explode.

Fireworks burst from her fingertips, painfully bright, all different colors. She can hear shout of pain and for a second she glimpses the man's are bright, bloody red and covered with angry, streaked, burns. The skin is bubbled and raw, smoking and near black in some cases. Bile rises in her throat and she dashes away on her skates. Jubilee has ripped off her rollerblades and sprinted several blocks to the beach before she can think. She shoves past people, innocent people who are just trying to enjoy themselves on one of the nicest days of the year, and kneels at the water's edge. She is shaking violently, tears streaming down her face as she sobs and gasps. She submerges her hands in the ocean, horrified. The water around her hands is scalding, bubbling and boiling with heat.

Jubilee kneels there for several hours, until she can remove her hands from the sea without violent, colorful sparks rolling off her fingertips. Then she walks to the police station and turns herself in.

She is charged with petty theft and assaulting a police officer. They think she set off fireworks in the mall. They don't know that the fireworks came from her hands. She spends a year and a half in a juvenile detention center. It isn't like in movies, with drama and scandal and conspiracies. There are girls that she avoids and girls that she sits near and girls that she talks to but she doesn't make friends. She takes classes, regular school ones and ones that are supposed to teach her to be a functioning member of society. She goes to the required therapy sessions and doesn't get in fights and doesn't tell anyone about her thing.

She is released into a halfway home, and then into the foster care system. She behaves herself. She doesn't get in fights or steal like the other kids. She listens and obeys her supervisors and teachers and works very, very hard on her homework, because those months of living in the mall were enough to keep her back a grade, and she hates it. The people at her state home try to place her with families a few separate times, but no one wants a kid with a record.

She doesn't have any friends, either at her new high school or at the state home. She doesn't talk much. She doesn't have any hobbies. (She liked rollerblading and gymnastics and shopping, but then her hands exploded and she isn't sure if she's allowed to like those things anymore.)

The adults like her. She is quiet and polite. She does what she is told without fuss. She is a mediocre student, but the effort is there. She doesn't ask for money or for rides, and if she doesn't spend much time with the other kids, she doesn't seem any worse off for it.

Before her thing, she was a social butterfly, popular and talkative and just the right amount of sassy. Now things like clothes and friends don't seem to matter. Everything is dampened by the constant itch in her palms, the restless energy in her fingers, the need to contain.

Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Mrs. Meyers, her social worker, tells her that a homosexual couple is looking to foster, and that she may end up being placed with them. Jubilee nods wordlessly, but Mrs. Meyers still hesitates. She wants Jubilee to meet them first, she explains, because "they are… well, you see, dear…certain, special circumstance have arisen, and…It's Bruce Banner and Clint Barton."

Jubilee is fazed by very little. She nods curtly at Mrs. Meyers and goes back to struggling over algebra.

Two days later, she is sitting next to Mrs. Meyers in a nice restaurant downtown, across from said superheroes. The dark-haired one, Bruce Banner, looks distinctly nervous. He is clutching his boyfriend's hand under the table. Clint, however, looks collected. Mrs. Meyer does most of the talking. She tells the couple all about Jubilee's nonexistent hobbies. She's trying to be helpful, trying to make Jubilee seem like a normal, happy outgoing teenager, because bless her heart, Mrs. Meyers really does want Jubilee to get placed. But they haven't even gotten to the main course yet and already Mrs. Meyer has made up three separate pastimes and brought up gymnastics, but hasn't said anything about Jubilee's police record or the fact that she's failing math or how she doesn't have any friends.

Normally Jubilee wouldn't care, but these men seem nice enough and they're superheroes, so probably they can tell that Mrs. Meyers is lying, and the burning itch in her hands is driving her crazy, so she interrupts.

"I have a police record."

Mrs. Meyers freezes. Now all three of them are staring at her. Bruce looks confused, Mrs. Meyers livid, but Clint is smiling slightly at her.

Mrs. Meyers' teach are clenched tight as she whispers, "What was that, dear?"'

Jubilee shrugs. "I have a police record. I thought you should know, because, y'know, I might be living with you."

Mrs. Meyers laughs awkwardly and pats her on the hand, then continues speaking. The entrees come, and Jubilee privately thinks that her chicken is perhaps the most delicious thing she's ever tasted. Mrs. Meyers' cell phone rings, and she stands, apologizing even as she shoots Jubilee a don't screw this up look over Bruce and Clint's heads.

As soon as she is gone, they both lean forward. Clint is grinning at her, but Bruce is completely serious.

"I assume you know about…me? About the Hulk?"

Jubilee nods. Everyone knows about the Hulk. Bruce closes his eyes briefly but continues.

"You should know this before you consider coming home with us. The Hulk is dangerous. He's under control ninety-nine percent of the time, but if you have any doubts, if you think you're going to be afraid at any time, tell us. We don't want you to stay with us and be afraid. We'd like you to come live with us, yes, but we want what's best for you."

Jubilee considers this. Is she afraid? She doesn't think so, and tells them that. Bruce laughs with relief and Clint's smile widens into a grin. They tell her about their home, the Avengers mansion, and about all the people that live there with them. She knows the Avengers, of course, but there are other names she doesn't recognize. Pepper is Pepper Potts, she assumes, but she doesn't know Darcy or Erik, or Jane or Peter. Peter is a bit older than her, they say, the adopted son of Tony and Steve Stark-Rogers. Mrs. Meyers returns before they can continue, and she takes over the conversation once again. Jubilee pretends she doesn't notice the small, happy smiles Clint and Bruce shoot at her for the reminder of dinner. She tells herself that she wants to go with these men to make them happy, to help them, so she can somehow make up for the horrible day that her hands exploded. She ignores the niggling, guilty voice in the back of her head that says she wants this as much as they do.

A week passes, and then she is on a plane to New York with her duffle bag of clothes. Mrs. Meyers gives her some money to buy them both lunch in the terminal, but instead she buys a pair of bright yellow sunglasses. Mrs. Meyer is not pleased. She confiscates the glasses and goes to buy lunch herself.

The flight lands and they are driven to the mansion by a man named Happy. They go through security and someone brings them upstairs to what is apparently the Banner-Barton floor of the mansion. Bruce and Clint are waiting expectantly, and they greet her fondly but without any touching, for which Jubilee is grateful. Bruce takes her bag and shows them around their floor, before leading them to her room. It is substantially bigger than the one she had at the state home, and just as impersonal.

"We didn't want to decorate it with something you wouldn't like," Clint explains, and Jubilee feels a rush of gratitude. She smiles shyly in response.

When the tour of their floor is finished, they continue throughout the rest of the mansion.

Clint narrates as the elevator advances. "This is Natasha and Pepper's floor. This one is for Tony and Steve and Peter. This floor has two suites, one for Darcy and one for Erik. Thor and Jane. This one is a guest floor, Tony insisted. These two are Tony's labs. This one is Bruce's, but we'll show you that later, it's kind of boring-" he grins as Bruce makes an indignant sound-"Gym and swimming pool, shooting range, training center, other training center, library, offices, theater, two more labs, kitchen, one of the like, twelve common rooms, dining rooms, kitchen again, kitchen again, I'm not even really sure what these floors are, ok, good, we're here."

They exit the elevator into a large living room thing that apparently contains everyone who is currently living in the house. Jubilee knows some of them on sight, of course. Steve Rogers is reading in an armchair. Natasha Romanoff is talking with Pepper Potts, tapping away on a tablet. Tony and a dark-haired woman (Darcy?) are arguing loudly about something involving air-traffic control and hypnotism. A blond woman is giggling as Thor and a boy about Jubilee's age (Peter, then) play a video game.

They all stop when the little group enters.

Bruce leans down and whispers into her ear, "Don't worry. They're hardly ever all together like this, but we wanted you to meet everyone at the same time so Clint and I can intervene."

Jubilee smiles slightly. Mrs. Meyer clears her throat loudly, and Jubilee winces. Bruce and Clint hurriedly introduce everyone. When they reach Peter, Steve interrupts.

"Peter is a sophomore too, so he'll help you get situated at school, show you around, that sort of thing."

Peter is smiling brightly at her, and she waits for Mrs. Meyers to clarify that no, actually, Jubilee is a freshman, a freshman who can barely handle her shit as it is, because this is clearly Mrs. Meyers' department. But after several seconds of frankly painful silence, Jubilee realizes that Mrs. Meyers has no intention of fulfilling her duties as a social worker and speaks up.

"Actually, I'm a freshman."

This causes a bit of trouble, because she is already registered at the high school as a sophomore, but then Pepper says she'll make some calls and that's that. Mrs. Meyers is apparently satisfied that Clint and Bruce aren't abusive or secret meth dealers, so she asks Bruce to see her downstairs, where she'll catch a cab to the airport. She's flying to Florida rather than California, so she can visit her sister. This is ostensibly code for "go on vacation". She makes sure they have her contact information and Jubilee's file. She takes Jubilee by surprise and pulls her into a hug, during which Jubilee slips her hand into Mrs. Meyers' oversized purse and tugs her new sunglasses free. Bruce leads her to the elevator and just like that Jubilee has a family.


	2. in which there is Confrontation

Incidentally, the day Jubilee meets the Hulk is the same day everyone finds out about her fireworks.

She's been living with them for almost three weeks, and she should have known that she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret. Since that awful day she was cornered in the mall, she hasn't lived with a real family. At the detention center, at the halfway house, at the state home, her roommates and guardians were constantly changing. Anyone who noticed her acting strangely was long gone before they could do a thing. Now, living in close quarters with a group of the most observant people on earth, she doesn't stand a chance.

It goes something like this.

She wakes up in the middle of the night with burning hands and restless, sparking energy coiled in her spine. Jubilee staggers out of bed and stumbles from her bedroom, hoping that movement might stifle the flares of heat in her palms. She's sweating and she's focusing so hard on containing the fireworks that she doesn't notice Bruce sitting up in the kitchen until he places his hand gently on her shoulder.

Jubilee reacts instinctively, startling out of his reach, throwing her hands up as if to warn him away. The millisecond she loses her focus is enough for the bursts of plasma to spring free from her fingertips. Bruce is enveloped by light.

Immediately, JARVIS sets off the Hulk alarm. Clint races out of the bedroom to find Hulk standing in the kitchen, holding Jubilee aloft, one huge hand around her waist. He stares at her intently, brow furrowed. Hulk casts his huge eyes towards Clint, grunting softly. Clint raises his hands and steps forward slowly, trying to appear nonthreatening.

"Put Jubilee down, Big Guy. C'mon, you don't want to hurt her."

Hulk sniffs, still clutching Jubilee. "Firegirl is sick."

Clint frowns and continues walking, slowly closing the gap. "Jubilee, Hulk. That's her name. What do you mean that she's sick?"

Hulk shoves Jubilee towards Clint, and Jubilee can't help the gasp that escapes her. "Firegirl is sick. Too hot!"

He deposits her on the ground. Immediately, Clint shoves Jubilee behind him. "Thanks, Big Guy. Now, why don't you let Bru-"

"FIX FIREGIRL!" Hulk roars, fist clenching angrily.

Clint turns to Jubilee, but she is already backing away, fists clenched and forearms taut, struggling to maintain control. She turns and sprints, flinging open the door to the suite and then to the stairs, racing up up up until she gets to the guest suite. She's in the bathroom, sitting fully clothed in the shower with the water running on cold before she calms down enough to breathe properly.

All she can think about is composing herself before Clint or Bruce find her. The frigid water steams where it comes in contact with her skin. She isn't sure how much time passes, but she is definitely not under control when Clint knocks on the bathroom door. He's worried, almost panicking, "Jubilee, are you okay? Bruce would never hurt you on purpose, you know that, right? Jubilee?"

Jubilee doesn't respond, just shrinks backwards into the corner of the shower, nails carving into the skin of her palms, not drawing blood but indentations evident.

"Jubilee? JUBILEE? JARVIS, initiate override protocol."

"Yes, sir."

Jubilee scrambles back, searches desperately for purchase on the slick tiles of the shower floor, but she's already against the wall and there's nothing she can do.

Clint rushes in and sees her, curled in a ball in the shower. He raises his hands in the same placating gesture he used earlier on the Hulk.

"I just have to make sure you're not hurt, ok?"

Slowly, he approaches her, but she shrieks, "No! Don't touch me!"

"Ok, ok. It's ok. JARVIS, do a full-body scan for injuries."

The room is silent but for the steady beat of the water.

"Miss Lee has sustained no injuries. Her temperature, however, registers at 104 degrees Fahrenheit."

Clint looks at her, tries to meet her eyes, but she refuses to make eye contact.

"Why don't you tell me what happened? Everything, from the beginning. Then we can go to the lab and get you some fever medication, and then, only if you want to, we'll talk to Bruce. He feels terrible. He thinks you're afraid of him."

Jubilee's head snaps up. "I'm not afraid of him! I just…just…"

Clint smiled sadly at her. "It's okay if you're afraid. No one will hold it against you. The Hulk can be pretty scary."

And now Jubilee is cursing herself, because not only has she royally fucked up any chance she had of a family, now Bruce thinks she's afraid of him. "Can you go get him?"

Clint hesitates. "I don't think I should leave you alone."

Jubilee closes her eyes and leans her head against the tiles. "Please? Jarvis can watch me. I'll stay here, I swear. Please?"


	3. Chapter 3

Clint and Bruce are back almost immediately. Jubilee is still huddled in the back corner of the shower, her knees drawn up to her chest. By now, the sparks have stopped rolling off her fingertips, and she’s starting to shiver in the frigid water that’s pounding down from above her. Bruce hesitates in the doorway, head ducked down and shoulders hunched. Clint makes it to the edge of the tiled shower and crouches down, careful not to crowd her or get too close. Finally assured that she’s not going to lose control, Jubilee allows him to haul her up from the floor of the bathroom and wrap a thick towel around her shivering, soaked frame. As soon as his hand hits her skin, he starts.

“Jesus, you’re burning hot! We’re going to the lab for some fever medicine, come on.”

Jubilee pulls away, shrinking in on herself. “No, I’ll explain, I don’t need any medicine!” Clint looks like he’s about to argue, but a look from Bruce shuts him up.

“Ok, let’s all just sit down at the table and you can talk to us, how’s that sound?”

Jubilee nods clumsily, allows herself to be pulled into the kitchen of the guest suite. Bruce is careful not to get too close to her or make any sudden movements. They sit down, and Clint looks at her expectantly. Bruce does not meet her eyes.

So she starts at the beginning. She tells them about the car accident and about that first orphanage, about living in the mall and stealing and sleeping on benches and running to escape the mall security. She gets as far as being cornered behind a trash can, frantic and terrified and alone, before her breath catches and she stumbles on her words.

“Is it all right if I touch you, Jubilee?” Clint asks, and she’s so grateful that they’re always so careful, that they always ask for permission before they touch her or ask her questions and she’s gone and ruined it but she’ll take what she can get at this point, so she nods and he lays a hand on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, okay?”

And Jubilee knows this; she’s spent the last three years not talking about things, not telling anyone, just keeping quiet and shutting up and look where that’s gotten her. So she takes a deep breath.

“I was behind the trashcan, on roller skates, and the guards were coming…”

She tells them everything, about the burned flesh on the man’s arms and the restless itching of energy under her skin and how it distracts her from everything important and how she lost control and burned Bruce and if she’s crying by the end of it Clint and Bruce don’t mention it. Instead, Clint takes her hand. Bruce still looks a bit reluctant to touch her, but at least he’s looking at her clearly. Even though Clint has always done most of the talking, it’s Bruce who speaks.

“Jubilee, I know this has been a pretty scary experience for you since your parents died, but you have to know that no one in this tower is going to think differently about you because you have this…ability. We’re pretty used to different. And Clint and I certainly aren’t going to suddenly stop loving you because of it. The only thing that’s going to change is that you won’t have to worry about keeping it contained anymore, because we’ll hopefully be able to help you control it.”

A look Jubilee can’t quite decipher passes over his face, and he hesitates.

“Unless you’re afraid. We don’t want you to stay here and be afraid, at any point, okay? That’s not the kind of life you deserve to have.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jubilee says, and it’s true. She hasn’t felt anything besides anxiety and a hope that she’s been trying very hard to keep under wraps since she arrived at Stark’s tower. Now, she can feel that hope swelling in her chest, and she considers for the first time that maybe she’ll be allowed to stay here forever. As if he knows what she’s thinking, Clint smiled reassuringly at her.

“You can always stay here, as long as you want to, Jubilee. You have to understand that. We love you.”

They send her to bed, after that, but she can’t fall asleep. Instead, she lies atop the plain duvet (they still have to go shopping for more personalized accessories) and smiles to herself, allowing pink and yellow sparks to trickle from her fingers and light up her room in bursts of color.

 

In the morning, she wakes up to blueberry pancakes and a very tired looking Bruce sitting at the table and drinking herbal tea. The second day she lived here, Bruce offered her some and she sipped it and recoiled. She had been worried that she had offended him, but he just laughed and told Clint to get her some coffee. He puts down his tablet when she sits across from him and asks her if she wants to tell the others about her fireworks.

“I guess so. It’s probably better that they know,” she admits, dragging her fork idly across a lake of syrup. Bruce nods carefully.

“We can tell them, if you like. Clint will make sure they’re not too insensitive about it.”

Jubilee accepts this with a certain amount of relief. Despite having lived here for almost three weeks, she doesn’t know most of the other inhabitants of the tower that well. They’re constantly off doing superhero-y or science-y things. The only one she’s talked to more than a handful of times is Jarvis, which is kind of sad when she thinks about it.  School’s due to starts in a few days, so she’ll go in with Peter, but until then she’s been keeping mostly to herself. They’re all nice to her, in their own strange ways, but she’s been too caught up in containing the fireworks and trying not to screw things up to really interact with them. Bruce nods like he understands and goes back to his tablet and tea.

Jubilee clears her plate and retreats to her bedroom, where Jarvis alerts her that Pepper Pots has sent her a message. The message is polite and matter-of-fact, telling Jubilee to start thinking about what she wants in her bedroom because next weekend she and Pepper and Darcy are going shopping. Jubilee smiles (she can hear classic rock playing in the background) and remembers how much she used to enjoy shopping before everything fell apart. She thinks that maybe everything will work out after all.


End file.
